page_title: Noach (parsha)
section_title: Genesis chapter 9
hierarchical_section_title: Noach (parsha) / In modern interpretation / Genesis chapter 9
context_page_description: Noach, Noiach, Nauach, Nauah, or Noah is the second weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 6:9–11:32. The parashah tells the stories of the Flood and Noah's Ark, of Noah's subsequent drunkenness and cursing of Canaan, and of the Tower of Babel.
  The parashah has the most verses of any weekly Torah portion in the Book of Genesis. It is made up of 6,907 Hebrew letters, 1,861 Hebrew words, 153 verses, and 230 lines in a Torah Scroll. In the Book of Genesis, Parashah Miketz has the most letters, Parashah Vayeira has the most words, and Parashah Vayishlach has an equal number of verses as Parashah Noach.
  Jews read it on the second Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in October or early November.
context_section_description: The 18th-century German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn alluded to Genesis 9:6, "in the image of God made He man," in comparing church and state. Government and religion, Mendelssohn asserted, have for their object the promotion, by means of public measures, of human felicity in this life and in the life to come. Both act upon people's convictions and actions, on principles and their application; the state, by means of reasons based on the relations between people, or between people and nature, and religion by means of reasons based on the relations between people and God. The state treats people as the immortal children of the earth; religion treats people as the image of their Creator.
  The 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza explained the report of Genesis 9:13, in which God told Noah that God would set God's rainbow in the cloud, as but another way of expressing the refraction and reflection that the rays of the sun are subjected to in drops of water. Spinoza concluded that God's decrees and mandates, and consequently God's Providence, are merely the order of nature, and when Scripture describes an event as accomplished by God or God's will, we must understand merely that it was in accordance with the law and order of nature, not that nature had for a time ceased to act, or that nature's order was temporarily interrupted.
caption: Spinoza
exif: {}